How do the US wannabes stack up on games?

Wednesday 6 February 2008 19.13 EST
First published on Wednesday 6 February 2008 19.13 EST

You don't have to be a resident of the United States to know that it's an election year. British eyeballs have been watching the coverage of primaries, caucuses and - most recently - the political media circus called Super Tuesday as if they had a say in who becomes the next president of the US.

To date, we've been educated on the candidates' platforms on healthcare, education and foreign policy - pretty typical stuff. But before this year is out, I predict another issue will rise up through the sluice: come April, when the politically charged Grand Theft Auto IV is released, games will be caught in a hypermedia culture clash which will have a ripple effect throughout the world. This isn't frippery; underneath all the "family values" talk that will inevitably rear its ugly head is an insight into how the future US president will cope with media censorship, and how games will be regulated in the future.

The political tsunami surrounding the explicit sex scenes buried in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2006 spurred Senator Hillary Clinton to propose the Family Entertainment Protection Act. The so-called Hot Coffee scandal instigated a flurry of controller-gazing as digital immigrant politicos tried to understand interactive content regulation. You can imagine Clinton's people are chomping at the bit for GTA IV's release on April 29. But what about the others?

They may not have as clear political connections to gaming as Clinton, but they are prepared to have opinions about them nonetheless. Conservative Mitt Romney is unabashedly open about his dislike for games, and one of his campaign ads implicates them in the same "cesspool of filth" as pornography, sex and perversion. Republican frontrunner John McCain has a political history that promotes stronger labelling on games, and he has publicly blamed the medium for offscreen violence. And Barack Obama, the beacon of change in Washington, doesn't think much of games either, notably returning a donation made to his campaign by the Electronic Software Association and publicly implying gamers were lazy. In a Common Sense Media survey about videogame regulation, he challenged the industry to take responsibility, or his administration would step in.

It may seem frivolous to talk about computer games in a campaign dominated by an unpleasant war in the Middle East, but how the candidates view this medium offers a clue as to how heavy-handed they'll be when it comes to media regulation. With this issue already a hot political potato in the UK, I'm holding my breath until April when a new pot of coffee is on course to boil over.